"sensation that continues to this day. A microwave oven cooks or heats food by dielectric heating. Cooking food with microwaves was discovered by Percy Spencer on October 8, 1945, while building magnetrons for radar sets at Raytheon. Spencer was working on an active radar set when he noticed a strange sensation, and saw that a peanut candy bar he had in his pocket started to melt. Although he was not the first to notice this phenomenon, as the holder of 120 patents, Spencer was no stranger to discovery and experiment, and realized what was happening. The radar had melted his"
"government in September 1940. The magnetron was later described by American historian James Phinney Baxter III as ""[t]he most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"". Contracts were awarded to Raytheon and other companies for mass production of the magnetron. In 1945, the specific heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer, an American self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a chocolate bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with"
"Spencer's microwave was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters. To verify his finding, Spencer created a high density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it had no way to escape. When food was placed in the box with the microwave energy, the temperature of the food rose rapidly. On 8 October 1945, Raytheon filed a United States patent application for Spencer's microwave cooking process, and an oven that heated food using microwave energy from a magnetron was soon placed in"
"Christopher Miner Spencer Christopher Miner Spencer (June 20, 1833 – January 14, 1922) was an American inventor, from Manchester, Connecticut, who invented the Spencer repeating rifle, one of the earliest models of lever-action rifle, a steam powered ""horseless carriage"", and several other inventions. He developed the first fully automatic turret lathe, which in its small- to medium-sized form is also known as a screw machine. Spencer worked for Samuel Colt’s factory, where he learned the arms-making trade. Although the Spencer rifle had been developed as early as 1859, it was not initially used by the Union. On August 18, 1863,"
"Francis Bannerman & Sons of New York who continued to manufacture his shotgun until around 1907. Christopher Miner Spencer Christopher Miner Spencer (June 20, 1833 – January 14, 1922) was an American inventor, from Manchester, Connecticut, who invented the Spencer repeating rifle, one of the earliest models of lever-action rifle, a steam powered ""horseless carriage"", and several other inventions. He developed the first fully automatic turret lathe, which in its small- to medium-sized form is also known as a screw machine. Spencer worked for Samuel Colt’s factory, where he learned the arms-making trade. Although the Spencer rifle had been developed"
"production of electromagnetic waves of a small enough wavelength (microwaves). American engineer Percy Spencer is generally credited with inventing the modern microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the ""Radarange"", it was first sold in 1946. Raytheon later licensed its patents for a home-use microwave oven that was first introduced by Tappan in 1955, but these units were still too large and expensive for general home use. Sharp Corporation introduced the first microwave oven with a turntable between 1964 and 1966. The countertop microwave oven was first introduced in 1967 by the Amana"
"Spencer Silver Spencer Ferguson Silver, an American chemist who worked together with Arthur Fry to invent the Post-it notes in 1974. (disputed) Silver was born in San Antonio, Texas. He majored in chemistry at Arizona State University, earning a B.S. in 1962, then earned a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1966, before taking a position as a Senior Chemist in 3M's Central Research Labs. Silver is now named on over 20 US patents; however, his most significant invention was not an immediate success. In 1968, Silver developed a high-quality but ""low-tack"" adhesive, made"
"Serendipity Serendipity means an unplanned, fortunate discovery. The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation. Examples are Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928, the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, and the invention of the Post-it note by Spencer Silver in 1968. In June 2004, a British translation company voted the word to be one of the ten English words hardest to translate. However, due to its sociological use, the word has since been exported into many other languages. The first noted use of ""serendipity"" in the English"
"the course of the next few years. His improvements were among those that increased magnetron production to 2,600 per day. For his work, he was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award by the U.S. Navy. One day while building magnetrons, Spencer was standing in front of an active radar set when he noticed the candy bar he had in his pocket had melted. Spencer was not the first to notice this phenomenon, but he was the first to investigate it. He decided to experiment using food, including popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn. In another experiment, an"
"Percival H. Spencer Percival Hopkins Spencer (April 30, 1897 – January 16, 1995) was an American inventor, aviation pioneer, test pilot, and businessman. He was born on April 30, 1897 to Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922), the inventor of, among other things, the Spencer repeating rifle. The then 14-year-old Spencer built his first pontooned hang glider in April 1911 from plans he found in a ""Popular Mechanics"" magazine. On May 15, 1914, Spencer made his first powered flight in a Curtiss flying boat. In 1929, he broke the light airplane altitude record——piloting a Curtiss Robin monoplane. Spencer was the president of"
"by Spencer in 1983 at the age of 86. Its design did not meet expectations and the sole example was donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Spencer died at a nursing home in Torrance, California in 1995, aged 97. Percival H. Spencer Percival Hopkins Spencer (April 30, 1897 – January 16, 1995) was an American inventor, aviation pioneer, test pilot, and businessman. He was born on April 30, 1897 to Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922), the inventor of, among other things, the Spencer repeating rifle. The then 14-year-old Spencer built his first pontooned hang glider in April"
"to clean. They also made several improvements to the filtering mechanism. Their improved design of plated metals, styled by industrial designer Alfonso Iannelli, became the famous Sunbeam ""Coffeemaster"" line of automated vacuum coffee makers (Models C-20, C-30, C40, and C-50). The Coffeemaster vacuum brewer was sold in large numbers in the United States during the years immediately following World War I. Percolators began to be developed from the mid-nineteenth century. In the United States, James H. Mason of Massachusetts patented an early percolator design in 1865. An Illinois farmer named Hanson Goodrich is generally credited with patenting the modern percolator."
"the cylinder to the next position and cock the internal hidden hammer. Multiple lever action designs including the Volcanic pistol were designed before the American Civil War, but the first significant lever-action designs were the Spencer repeating rifle and Henry rifle. The Spencer was a magazine-fed lever-operated breech-loading rifle designed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. It was fed from a removable seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, when emptied, could be exchanged for another. Over 20,000 were made, and it was adopted by the United States and used during the American Civil"
"Charles A. Spencer Charles A. Spencer was an American scientific pioneer and inventor, who is widely believed to have developed the first American-made achromatic objective microscope. He was born in 1813 in Madison County, NY and died in 1881. Spencer’s first microscopes were available for purchase in 1838. Previous to Spencer’s invention, European manufacturers held a monopoly on research-quality microscopic equipment. At least one of Spencer’s microscopes survives and is currently held by the Smithsonian Institution. In 1854, Spencer formed a partnership with A.K. Eaton for the manufacture of high quality microscopes, which was located in Canastota, NY, USA. This"
"the Cereal Machine Company. In 1895, Perky received United States Patent Number 548,086, dated 15 October 1895. The biscuits proved more popular than the machines, so Perky moved East and opened his first bakery in Boston, Massachusetts and then in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1895, retaining the name of The Cereal Machine Company, and adding the name of the Shredded Wheat Company. Whether he developed his ideas on nutrition before the machine or after, Perky was a food faddist who believed the fundamental issue was how to nourish a man so that his condition will be natural. Although John Harvey Kellogg"
"and develop technologies for assisting blinded World War II veterans. Experimental psychologist Alvin Liberman joined the Laboratories to assist in developing a ""sound alphabet"" to represent the letters in a text for use in a reading machine for the blind. Luigi Provasoli joined the Laboratories to set up a research program in marine biology. The program in marine biology moved to Yale University in 1970 and disbanded with Provasoli's retirement in 1978. Franklin S. Cooper invented the pattern playback, a machine that converts pictures of the acoustic patterns of speech back into sound. With this device, Alvin Liberman, Cooper, and"
"Spencer repeating rifle The Spencer Repeating Rifles and Carbines were early American lever action firearms invented by Christopher Spencer. The Spencer was the world's first military metallic cartridge repeating rifle, and over 200,000 examples were manufactured in the United States by the Spencer Repeating Rifle Co. and Burnside Rifle Co. between 1860 and 1869. The Spencer repeating rifle was adopted by the Union Army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time. Among the early users was George Armstrong Custer. The Spencer carbine was"
"conformity with international patent law. The modern-day provisions of the law applied to inventions are laid out in Title 35 of the United States Code (Ch. 950, sec. 1, 66 Stat. 792). From 1836 to 2011, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a total of 7,861,317 patents relating to several well-known inventions appearing throughout the timeline below. Some examples of patented inventions between the years 1946 and 1991 include William Shockley's transistor (1947), John Blankenbaker's personal computer (1971), Vinton Cerf's and Robert Kahn's Internet protocol/TCP (1973), and Martin Cooper's mobile phone (1973). 1946 Space observatory A"
"making the deal for the Super Soaker with the Larami Corporation, Larami became a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc. in February 1995. But being an inventor, Johnson came up with another idea: replacing the water in the Super Soaker with a ""toy [Nerf] projectile."" In 1996, Johnson received patent US5553598 A for ""Pneumatic launcher for a toy projectile and the like."" Johnson discovered he was underpaid royalties for the Super Soaker and several ""Nerf line of toys, specifically the N-Strike and Dart Tag brands."" In November 2013, Johnson was awarded nearly $73 million in royalties from Hasbro Inc. in arbitration. According"
"resulting in the flow of many modern innovations. The great American inventors include Robert Fulton (the steamboat); Samuel Morse (the telegraph); Eli Whitney (the cotton gin, interchangeable parts); Cyrus McCormick (the reaper); and Thomas Edison (with more than a thousand inventions credited to his name). Most of the new technological innovations over the 20th and 21st centuries were either first invented in the United States, first widely adopted by Americans, or both. Examples include the lightbulb, the airplane, the transistor, the atomic bomb, nuclear power, the personal computer, the iPod, video games, online shopping, and the development of the Internet."
"out cannons He worked on water compression and invented a bathometer or piezometer to measure the depth of the sea by its pressure. Perkins created some of the best steel plates (as noted from English Engravers) for engraving, and started a printing business with engraver Gideon Fairman. They began with school books, and also made currency that was not being forged. In 1809 he bought the stereotype technology (prevention of counterfeit bills) from Asa Spencer, and registered the patent, and then employed Asa Spencer. Perkins made several important innovations in printing technology, including new steel engraving plates. Using these plates"
"a high wing with a two-bladed propeller in pusher configuration; and a long, slender tail boom. In December 1941, Spencer put the Air Car into storage and joined the war effort as a test pilot for the Republic Aircraft Corporation. By 1943, he had flight tested 134 of the company's P-47 Thunderbolts. In April 1943, Spencer left Republic Aircraft for the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago, Illinois, which wanted to use his Air Car to promote the company. Spencer used the company's wood forming equipment to build a new egg-shaped cabin for the Air Car and began demonstrating the aircraft"
"microwave cooking oven, eventually named the Radarange. In 1947, the first commercially produced microwave oven was about 6 feet tall, weighed about 750 lbs, and cost about 5,000 US$. In 1967 the first relatively affordable ($495) and reasonably sized (counter-top) microwave oven was available for sale. Spencer became Senior Vice President and a Senior Member of the Board of Directors at Raytheon. He received 300 patents during his career, and a building at the Raytheon Missile Defense Center in Burlington, Massachusetts is named in his honor. Other achievements and awards, besides the Distinguished Public Service Award, included a membership of"
"semi-bituminous and bituminous coal only inside the steam locomotives. Sadly, this invention lasted until 1960 when Diesel's fully replaced American railroads. 1943 Slinky A Slinky or ""Lazy Spring"" is a toy consisting of a helical spring that stretches and can bounce up and down. It can perform a number of tricks, including traveling down a flight of steps end-over-end as it stretches and re-forms itself with the aid of gravity and its own momentum. The Slinky was invented in 1943 by American engineer Richard T. James while working in his home laboratory to invent a set of springs that could"
"named after the then-acting governor of Massachusetts, Spencer Phips. Spencer was the home of the Howe family of inventors, including Elias Howe, who perfected the lockstitch sewing machine. In 1784 Spencer was a major stopping place on the Old Boston Post Road's stage route between Boston and Hartford, and on to New York. Passengers changed stages in Spencer, as one coach would come from Boston and connect with one coming north from Hartford. Each stagecoach would turn around and return whence it came. Travelers often stopped for the night at Jenk’s Tavern in Spencer, as did General Henry Knox, pushing"
"Floyd Firestone Floyd Alburn Firestone (1898–1986) was an acoustical physicist, who in 1940 while a professor at the University of Michigan invented the first practical ultrasonic testing method and apparatus. He was granted US Patent 2,280,226 for the invention in 1942. Manufactured by Sperry Corporation, the testing device was known variously as the Firestone-Sperry Reflectoscope, the Sperry Ultrasonic Reflectoscope, the Sperry Reflectoscope and sometimes also just as a Supersonic Reflectoscope, the name Firestone had originally coined for the instrument. The technology is not just used in quality control in factories to reject defective parts before shipment, but also revolutionized transportation"
"with a new machine that sealed candy stick in moisture-proof wrappers. Increasing production rates via automating the production was accomplished with a creation of Father Harding Keller, a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Little Rock, and McCormack's brother-in-law. Fr. Keller first invented a machine to dispense ribbons of peanut butter on the company's peanut butter crackers. In 1950, Keller invented a machine that twisted soft candy into the spiral striping that defined the look of candy canes and then cutting the canes in precise lengths. Fr. Keller patented his invention, the ""Keller Machine"". Fr. Keller and his machine"
"the first patent (, on February 10, 1885 for a safety belt). Claghorn was granted United States Patent #312,085 for a Safety-Belt for tourists, painters, firemen, etc. who are being raised or lowered, described in the patent as ""designed to be applied to the person, and provided with hooks and other attachments for securing the person to a fixed object."" In 1946, Dr. C. Hunter Shelden opened a neurological practice at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. In the early 1950s, Dr. Shelden made a major contribution to the automotive industry with his idea of retractable seat belts. This came"
"1947, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, William Shockley of Bell Labs invented the transistor. In 1956, they received a Nobel Prize for their invention. The transistor led to an electronics revolution during the post-war boom. The transition from vacuum tubes to transistors enabled all technologies to be built on a smaller scale and use less electricity. Items that before required large dedicated spaces, could now fit into a home or even on a kitchen counter. In 1954, Gerald Pearson, Darryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller invented the solar cell. Telstar, the first active communications satellite also developed by Bell Labs and launched"
"small 1 MW swimming pool-type reactor"" at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel, which for a short time helped the Israelis conceal the fact that they were also building a much larger reactor for military purposes elsewhere in the country with French assistance during the same time. Patterson encountered a prototype of an automatic bowling pin setter in the 1940's. To get the cash to develop the invention, Patterson swapped AMF stock to acquire eight small companies with fast-selling products. After incorporating key features developed by Leslie L. LeVeque, the AMF ""Pinspotter"", perfected and put on the market in"
"Pattern playback The pattern playback is an early talking device that was built by Dr. Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues, including John M. Borst and Caryl Haskins, at Haskins Laboratories in the late 1940s and completed in 1950. There were several different versions of this hardware device. Only one currently survives. The machine converts pictures of the acoustic patterns of speech in the form of a spectrogram back into sound. Using this device, Alvin Liberman, Frank Cooper, and Pierre Delattre (later joined by Katherine Safford Harris, Leigh Lisker, and others) were able to discover acoustic cues for the perception"
"Roper's firearms company failed, and the following year, 1869, the Billings and Spencer founded a partnership in Hartford, Connecticut called Billings & Spencer, which would manufacture sewing machines, drop-forged hand tools, and machine tools. Around 1882, Spencer started a new company, the Spencer Arms Company, in Windsor, Connecticut. Its most remarkable product was likely the Spencer Pump-Action Shotgun. Produced between 1882 and 1889, this was the first commercially successful slide-action (or pump-action) shotgun. Most were manufactured in 12-gauge with 10-gauge being an uncommon variant. Once again faced with financial hardships, Spencer's company and his patents were purchased circa 1890 by"
"the water. Business administration underwent technological change. The ball point pen was marketed in the US in October 1945 and in Canada shortly thereafter. The IBM Selectric typewriter, introduced in 1961, quickly became popular with businesses in Canada, as did the Xerox photocopier in the 1960s. There was important progress in medical technology during this period. In 1945 Dr. Stuart Stanbury established a National Blood Transfusion Programme for the Canadian Red Cross Society, thus making available to those in need, a dependable source of blood for medical purposes. The associated test for blood typing was introduced at the same time."